


A Sherlockian date

by Hotaru_Tomoe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: A Date, Gen, M/M, Not Season/Series 03 Compliant, Post-Reichenbach, Slice of Life, Unrealistic description of autopsy, according to Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-14 23:27:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29426709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hotaru_Tomoe/pseuds/Hotaru_Tomoe
Summary: After his return, Sherlock and John are living quite content in Baker Street, and Sherlock decides to organize something special for John. Almost a date.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	A Sherlockian date

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janto321 (FaceofMer)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaceofMer/gifts).



> Dear Merinda, you make the Sherlock fandom better every day with your presence and your stories, so when Wendymarlowe contacted me for this little project, I was happy to join.  
> Wish you the best ♥

He never cared about festivities and celebrations, especially the most useless and commercial ones. Christmas still had a faint taste of sweetness, but Sherlock believed it was mainly due to the imprinting he received when he was still a child and therefore more influenceable, but the other celebrations had never touched him. In fact, he was very annoyed when someone tried to drag him into such an event.

During high school, a girl whose name he had quickly canceled, insisted so much on asking him out for the prom that Sherlock was forced to remind her of the futility and stupidity of that party. Which was a thing for couples, anyway. The two of them weren't a couple, so why did she bother him? The episode ended with the girl in tears, for reasons that still eluded him, and her friends comforting her, yelling at Sherlock that he was an asshole. Also about the insults, he still didn't understand why.

He still didn't care about festivities and celebrations, but one major exception had made its way into his mind and his life: John Watson.

Before the fall, Sherlock thought of John, sometimes. 

While he was away, he thought of John to the point that he dearly missed him.

After his return, he thought of John almost constantly.

About the way John was rubbing his eyes after a long day at the clinic, about the way he gradually resumed talking to him, then smiling at him, about the way John knocked on the front door one day with a bag in his hand, wondering if his old room was still vacant (it was, Sherlock made sure to scare every potential flatmate away).

John changed, and also Sherlock became softer. Not generally speaking, and not towards the other idiots that infested the earth, but toward John.

John, with his jumpers and his cups of tea, John, who asked him about the cases and followed him when he wasn’t working at the clinic, John, who has stopped seeing strings of women and seemed quite happy with his current life.

Their life together, as it was before. Even a little better than before.

And that was why Sherlock was willing to do something with him, for him.

Like a date.

But he doesn’t want to organize something dull like a dinner in a restaurant. John deserved something special, suitable for him.

Problem was, Sherlock wasn't an expert in that field, and the Internet said everything and the opposite about dates.   
He didn't want to ask advice to Geoffrey or whatever his name was or, god forbid, Mycroft. Angelo would have suggested candles and red wine, and, as he said, it was too cliché. Mrs. Hudson was a better candidate, but Sherlock feared her advice would be rather out of fashion. Molly? She would have babbled some nonsense, looking sad and awkward.

He was running out of options.

Well, he has fought and defeated the Napoleon of crime, he should be able to organize a date by himself.

John looked at the message he just received, and smiled.

"Hey, Ted, can you cover me? I've an emergency," John appeared on the threshold of his colleague's room.

"Blonde or brunette?" His colleague laughed.

John rolled his eyes, "Ted, I'm serious."

"Right. You owe me that."

"Anytime."

It wasn't really an emergency, he and Sherlock now had a code for real emergencies. For any other situation, Sherlock had learned to ask if John was free to join him.

John didn't believe it would ever happen, yet Sherlock had changed after his return.

John was initially furious, but he didn't help but notice the way Sherlock was really saddened to have hurt him, and how reaching toward him to make amends, with little steps and almost invisible attention, and respecting John’s boundaries at the same time.

And after calming down and rationalizing the whole Moriarty affair, John realized he missed his old life, the adrenaline, the adventures, the impossible cases, but moreover he missed… Sherlock, his personality, his quirks, even his histrionic tantrums.

Sherlock.

Yes, he had missed the mad man, and he was too old to keep a grudge forever and live miserably, so he was back at Baker Street.

Now Sherlock had just texted him that he had something interesting to show him at Barts, and John hadn't thought twice about it. It wasn't an emergency, but he wanted to be with Sherlock: the clinic where he worked now treated almost exclusively old people with ailments due to age. It was really boring, because it mostly consisted in listening to their complaints, and John often had to refrain from yawning. Whatever Sherlock wanted to show him, it was definitely better than this. 

He had even given up on going out with some random women, after all his dates never led anywhere, and John already knew he would ditch the woman at the restaurant, at the movies, at an art show, if Sherlock called for anything even vaguely interesting.

At the beginning he thought that not dating anyone would be a burden for him, that he would miss women, but he didn't; he was happy with the life he had, the decision he took was the right one.

Sherlock was waiting for John in the morgue; in the end he had taken inspiration from Angelo and had brought candles. Actually the candles were Molly's and they were Yankee ones, to cover up the smell of decay, but they were still candles.

And, speaking of Angelo, he had also asked him to deliver something to eat. The Italian restaurateur had expressed doubts about the location of the dinner -a morgue!- but John was different, he would not have been scandalized. That was why he clicked with Sherlock so well.

"Well, what do we have here?" John asked, entering the room, amused at the sight of the corpse hidden beneath the sheet.

"Are you up for an autopsy?" Sherlock asked, bringing his arms behind his back.

"Did you piss off Molly for good?" John chuckled.

"I don't see how this is possible."

John shook the head fondly, "No, but seriously, why?"

"You… don't like it?"

"No, it's not that. It's just that I haven't done an autopsy since medical school... Christ, it has been twenty years."

He said so, but took off his jacket, placing it over Sherlock's coat and putting on an apron and latex gloves.

He lifted the sheet and took out the medical records, but there was nothing written on it.

"Hmm... Sherlock, are you sure this is legal?"

"Of course it is, who did you take me for?"

"For someone who steals ashtrays at Buckingham Palace."

They both burst out laughing.

"There's nothing you need to worry about."

Sherlock knew the identity of the deceased, he had been identified that morning thanks to the missing persons database, but he hadn't written anything on the medical record. It was part of the date.

Officially, it was Molly who was conducting that autopsy. Sherlock would take care of forging the documents later.

When John began the incision, Sherlock leaned over the corpse.

"When Molly does it, I can never follow the autopsy: she starts stuttering and saying nonsense about the weather of her cats. Quite annoying, actually."

"That poor girl is a saint,” John chuckled, then he took the medical records again, "But really, can you tell me something more about this man?"

"Cause of death is unknown. When the police found him under a freeway overpass, he had no documents.”

“Was he homeless?"

"You tell me."

"What is it? A quiz?”

“Humor me.”

John shook his head again, as if to say,  _ ‘you’re mad, you know that, right?’ _ , then he started the work for real.

“Right, let’s find out what happened to him.”

Sherlock understood that normal people weren't like him, they couldn't get dozens of clues by looking at a person's clothes or his home, but John was a doctor and Sherlock was sure that he could deduce a lot from examining a corpse.

"For starters, I can say that, if he was homeless, he hadn't been for long. He has an unkempt beard and dirty hair, but his teeth are neat, his muscles toned, he certainly had no malnutrition problems. The skin is bruised, but they all look superficial. I wouldn't say he was beaten, rather, looking at the location of the bruises and grazes on his hands and knees, he looks like he fell off often.”

John opened it and first examined the liver and pancreas, but the organs showed no signs of alcoholism.

"Given the bruises from falling, it was my first guess."

"Oh come on, it would have been too easy."

"At least tell me what I'm looking for. Is he a murder victim?"

"As I said, you will tell me."

John didn't hold back from a challenge, so, in the following hours, he discovered that the man had lived for a while in a tropical country, from an exotic fungus found on the skin, and had been a smoker, from the state of the lungs (which gave him the opportunity to lecture Sherlock on the risks of smoking once again).

Then they took a break, eating Angelo's food and drinking red wine. The food was really delicious, especially the burrata.

"It's because Angelo gets it fresh from Italy every week. Other restaurants are satisfied with the one produced in London, but it's not the same thing," Sherlock explained, and then told John about the food he had eaten in Italy and how far it was from Italian cuisine abroad.

John was always happy when Sherlock told him something about that time: he had been to so many places! Regarding Italy, he told Sherlock he would like to taste the real Italian food.

"I know the best restaurants in Rome, off the beaten track," Sherlock said.

"I'll gladly take a few days off," John answered, stretching his arms over his head.

It was nice to make plans; since he had returned Sherlock had been a little less obsessed with work.

Sure, mysteries and inexplicable cases always intrigued him, but he had lost that underlying anxiety and craving that sometimes made him hysterical. John believed he was calmer because the chapter  _ "Moriarty and his crime network" _ was closed forever. As a doctor he shouldn't have been relieved by someone's death, but surely he would never have gone to bring flowers to that asshole’s grave.

They went back to examine the body.

From a thorough blood and tissue test, John discovered that lately the man was making a disproportionate use of anti-inflammatories and painkillers, and his skin had redness and abrasions around the temples, but not caused by an infection. It was as if he had obsessively pressed his fingers to his scalp.

"Weird..."

"What do you think it is?"

"Nothing good for him."

John got a suspicion, and he prepared to open the man's skull.

"Need your help, here."

"Tell me what to do," Sherlock said, and he was excited like a child.

Some might say it wasn't decent, but it had always worked for them.

John weighed the brain, studied it from various angles, then dissected it, and finally grabbed a flap of tissue in the cerebellum. It was very small, but an examination with the microscope revealed that it was a tumor.

"I would say we have the direct cause of death: the tumor caused a hemorrhage. And I think it can explain all the other oddities as well. A tumor in the cerebellum causes problems with balance, which is why he fell often and was bruised. He must also have caused a great deal of confusion, perhaps he has lost his memory and recently found himself living among the homeless."

"And the marks on the temples?"

"He must have had some terrible headaches, that's why he massaged them obsessively with his fingers, and took all those drugs, but in vain. Well, I'm sorry for you."

Sherlock frowned, "Why?"

"Well, because I guess you were already looking forward to a mysterious murder, but this man died of natural causes."

"Oh," the detective shrugged, "the family will be glad to know."

"Hm."

John threw the apron in the bin and went to the sink to wash his hands, while Sherlock put out the candles.

It had grown dark outside. A glance at his watch told him it was now eleven in the evening. The autopsy had been interesting and engaging: he had been able to exercise his medical knowledge on something more complex than joint pains and runny noses.

Time had flown by and he and Sherlock had enjoyed themselves.

It had been nice, actually.

John was sure Sherlock already knew that the man hadn't been killed, yet he had wanted to arrange something for him. Maybe he realized that John was bored at work, maybe he wanted to spend time with him, talking about something, medical science, which they had in common.

For once he had been the detective, explaining to Sherlock what he discovered during the various exams.

To be honest, by Sherlock's standards, this could almost be called a romantic date.

He smiled and wiped his hands with the roll of paper.

By now he was quite adept at understanding the Sherlockian language.

"I really enjoyed myself today. We should do it again, sometime."

Sherlock smiled: he wasn't a dating expert, but it seemed to have worked well.

"Sure, we should."

After all, a theory had to be tested several times, to be able to say that it was true.

“Let’s go home,” John said. He didn't wonder if the next date would be more traditional, or where it would take them. He preferred to proceed baby step by baby step, and see, but something told him that everything would be fine.


End file.
